By Onyinkwa O
Previously, Kenyan men on social media took pride in engaging in public display of affection for their women. We penned heart warming, knee weakening and breath disrupting poems for our Queens. We posted pictures from those romantic lunch and dinner dates and declared our undying love for these angels that make our lives so beautiful we wonder what life would be without them. We appreciated and acknowledged our wives and girlfriends because the honest truth is that these ‘lollipops’ are the rhythm to which our hearts beat.
But along the way, the ‘toxic feminists’ showed up and spoilt the broth. These ever angry, bitter, vindictive and combative women with an extremely alien and distorted interpretation and understanding of male-female relationships came in with the narrative that there is this massive liberation war women must fight against men that cannot let women relate to men in any other way than as adversaries. In the ‘make believe world’ they live in, women are supposed to be perpetually at war with men, and any form of affection between the sexes is a manifestation of patriarchy that must be fought in order to liberate women from misogyny.
The ongoing and trending ‘men’s conference’ posts are being done on a light note yes, but they are cruel manifestation of this silly and imaginary war that these ‘toxic feminists’ begun, but into which many otherwise sober and sensible women were unwittingly sucked into, giving it a veneer of authenticity, and driving a wedge between men and women on social media that criminalizes any show of affection for our better halves. Posting all that ‘men’s conference’ stuff may appear like harmless fun much like the ‘Manchester United vs Arsenal’ taunts we exchange here, but believe me, when matters of the heart are the heart of the matter, these things somehow subconsciously creep into our real life love lives and create unnecessary tensions in ways that may not be too obvious to the ‘naked eye’, but which exist nevertheless.
Just for today, let us make love. Not war! And oh! I did not mean to ‘objectify’ women by referring to them as ‘lollipops’.
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